Corporate report

Flood Forecasting Centre: strategic plan 2025 to 2027

Published 16 April 2026

Applies to England and Wales

1. Foreword by Russell Turner, Head of Centre

The Flood Forecasting Centre (FFC) is a strategic partnership between the Environment Agency and the Met Office. We support flood resilience in our current changing climate.

This Strategic Plan spans 2025–2027. It shows how the FFC will:

• contribute to national resilience
• create services that help decision-making
• make the most of advances in science and technology

Since the publication of our last Strategic Plan in 2021, we have:

• celebrated 15 years of operations

• maintained our core services

• introduced a new Rapid Flood Guidance (RFG) service

• navigated a return to office working following Covid‑19

• provided guidance through many named storms and flooding events

Weather and flood events are now breaking records more often. Our warming climate holds more moisture. This leads to heavier rainfall and impacts sensitive catchments.

Over the past three years, every county in England and Wales has seen flooding of some kind. Many communities have seen repeated flooding.

In light of climate and catchment changes, the work of the FFC is becoming vital. The recent devastating floods in Germany (2021) and Spain (2024) have clearly shown this need.

Our plan keeps us ready for the future by setting clear outcomes and milestones.

2. Who we are

The Flood Forecasting Centre:

• is a working partnership between the Environment Agency and the Met Office

• is funded by Defra, with a contribution from the Welsh Government

• has an advisory user group representing Category 1 and 2 responders

• has governance arrangements which include a Joint Steering Group between the Environment Agency and the Met Office

• is part of the Incident Management and Response Directorate within the Environment Agency and the Services Directorate within the Met Office

3. What we do

We provide a national flood forecasting and guidance service to support government and Category 1 and 2 responders.

Together with the Met Office, Environment Agency and Natural Resources Wales, we provide a forecast-led incident management service for England and Wales.

This provides a consistent assessment of flood risk at a national and local scale.

4. Our plan

Our goal

The FFC clearly contributes to national resilience.

Our purpose

We evolve our services to maximise their value.

Our objectives

The Strategic Plan has three objectives:

1. We capitalise on and deliver through our partnerships

2. We put users at the heart of all we do

3. We ensure the FFC is fit for the future

5. Objective 1: We capitalise on and deliver through our partnerships

5.1 Success criteria

For this objective we have 3 success criteria. We will:

• integrate planning and co‑develop capabilities - improving efficiency wherever possible

• help improve and deliver national resilience - through integrated flood incident management

• develop our role in surface water flooding - to improve national resilience

5.2 Key actions

To achieve these objectives, our actions will be to:

• engage with the ongoing reviews of the future target operating model in both partner organisations

• keep testing end-to-end ensembles in Environment Agency local forecasting models - and implement them when possible

• keep helping Natural Resources Wales use ensemble-based flood forecasting in their service

• utilise the project, programme and lifecycle management expertise of our parent organisations

• deliver our operational service in line with our service standards - and routinely report our performance

• ensure strong 24/7 services with solid business continuity plans

• work with other public weather and flood forecasting agencies to - move towards a joint commitment to a Common Warnings Framework (CWF) for the United Kingdom (UK)

• secure funding for, implement and embed RFG into the FFC 24/7 services

• produce surface water modelling and service improvement plans

5.3 Measures of success

By the end of the plan period, we will show our progress by meeting the following measures.

Ensemble Flood Forecasting (EFF)

We aim to have:

• completed a successful trial run that recommends pre-operational EFF is progressed

• completed a successful pre-operational EFF running - with a recommendation to move to operational use

• a baseline of customer (responder and public) satisfaction for the pre-change service

24/7 Service standards

We aim to:

• consistently deliver 3 days lead time for significant flooding

• consistently deliver 2 day lead time for significant surface water flooding

• issue 95% of FGS (morning issue) on time and in full - by no later than 11:00 local time

Resilience Standards

We aim to:

• issue draft rosters as near as possible to the 1st day of the preceding month but one - and final duty rosters by the 15th day of the preceding month but one

• make sure rosters meet our wellbeing standards for rostering

• have our resilience number of 12 operational hydrometeorologists trained and available on the operations block

• have our resilience number of 6 duty managers trained and available

• have our pipeline of at least 2 hydrometeorologists in training

Rapid Flood Guidance

We aim to integrate the RFG as a new service into FFC 24/7 services by end of March 2027.

6. Objective 2: We put users at the heart of all we do

6.1 Success criteria

For this objective we have 3 success criteria. We will:

• develop our services in a way that supports our users to make better decisions 

• make sure our users understand FFC guidance - and have the confidence to use it 

• improve our users’ experience when interacting with FFC

6.2 Key actions

To achieve these objectives, our actions will be to:

• complete a FFC services review - to inform and prioritise future product lifecycle plans

• make significant progress to deliver a “digital first” FGS

• create, maintain and conduct regular reviews of a portfolio of training material for our users

• allocate resource for user training - and deliver an ongoing training plan

• contact new users when they sign up to products and services - so they are aware of training resources available

• benchmark user satisfaction - via our own tailored FFC satisfaction survey and user engagement

• commission research to better understand our user base - and how they use FFC services

• plan a regular programme of market intelligence - using both in-house and outsourced resource and expertise

• review both internal and external communication

6.3 Measures of success

By the end of the plan period, we will show our progress by meeting the following measures.

Service Level Agreements (SLAs)

By the end of March 2026, we will have:

• completed the allocation of Proxy SLAs to our Business Service Offerings - based on the new Met Office Service Levels

• completed a review of all Business Continuity plans for our Business Service Offerings - to check that they align with the Met Office Service Levels

• agreed at least 60% of our SLAs with our users

“Digital first” FGS

We will make significant progress on the production tool and archive. The goal is to have them in testing with FFC hydrometeorologists by the end of March 2026.

FFC service user training

We will use targets for our user training, including:

• awareness of training moving from a baseline of 50% to 80% - measured via user research

• a 25% increase on numbers of new users trained (including those trained by the CCA team)

User research

By March 2026, we will implement an evolved approach to user research. This will include:

• a set baseline for user satisfaction
• improvements seen in satisfaction ratings

7. Objective 3: We ensure the FFC is fit for the future

7.1 Success criteria

For this objective we have 3 success criteria. We will:

• invest in enhancing the skills of the FFC team through broadening our recruitment channels - and improving learning and development opportunities for our people 

• improve team wellbeing - and increase our capacity for change through improvements in how we use our resources 

• take advantage of new science and technology to improve our services - and keep our authoritative voice

7.2 Key actions

To achieve these objectives, our actions will be to:

• implement early careers routes into the FFC - to increase feeder routes into the FFC

• produce an FFC marketing and comms plan for recruitment

• recruit and onboard a People Development Advisor

• continue to embed and develop our FFC People Leader Group

• implement and maintain a structured hydrometeorologist learning and development programme - to support staff development

• improve our ability to predict recruitment and capacity issues - by developing our Strategic Workforce Planning

• engage with the team and undertake a Ways of Working (WoW) Review

• upskill key staff to provide a focus for leading our exploration of generative AI and machine led opportunities

• audit all our products, services and processes - to help us find ways to integrate generative AI into our workflows

• build on current scientific partnerships - to ensure service developments use the best available science

7.3 Measures of success

By the end of the plan period, we will show our progress by meeting the following measures.

Learning and Development

We aim to have:

• adopted the hydrometeorologist learning and development programme for all non-senior hydrometeorologists

• at least 2 hydrometeorologists attending a Flood and Coastal Risk Management (FCRM) module at Lancaster University

• explored the hydrometeorologist Environment Agency graduate scheme pathway and the creation of a foundation hydrometeorologist role

• refined and updated the hydrometeorologist learning and development programme

• at least two early career placements working in FFC for more than 4 months

Ways of Working Review (WoW)

To boost team wellbeing and enhance our ability to adapt, we plan to:

• implement the signed off recommendations from the WoW Review

• see an improvement in the wellbeing of duty staff

Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML)

To take advantage of new science and technology to improve our services and keep our authoritative voice, we aim to have:

• trialled at least three different AI/ML ‘opportunities’

• contributed to a Services AI/ML strategy - by presenting at four key meetings during the two-year strategy period

• used the Services Review outcome to find out which services will target generative AI integration

• created a plan for specific services to target as a pilot - and a timeline for implementation